This page provides information on V-Ray SDK.
Overview
The V-Ray SDK is included with the installation of V-Ray for 3ds Max and allows the creation of V-Ray compatible materials, textures, lights, atmospheric effects, cameras, and custom geometric primitives. In addition, the V-Ray SDK includes the source code for some of the additional V-Ray plugins - for example, the VRayDomeCamera plugin.
Installation
The V-Ray SDK is installed with the "Workstation" installation type and is normally installed in the folder "C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\V-Ray\3ds Max NNNN" where NNNN is the version of 3ds Max (2020, 2021, etc.).
Folder Structure
The V-Ray SDK includes the following folders:
\docs – Includes general information about the V-Ray architecture as well as a help file vrayclasses.chm with documentation of the various classes in the SDK. The vrayclasses.chm file is automatically generated from the header files included with the SDK.
\include – Contains the header files for the V-Ray SDK needed for compiling 3ds Max plugins that use the V-Ray SDK.
\lib – Contains the library files needed for linking plugins that use the V-Ray SDK.
\samples – Includes the source code for some of the plugins that ship with V-Ray (e.g. the VRayDomeCamera plugin), as well as some additional samples (e.g. VRayBlinnMtl)
Compiling the Samples
The sample projects come with a CMake project that can be used to generate Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 solutions or Ninja projects.
A matching 3ds Max SDK is needed to build the example projects. The setup needs the CMake variable 3DSMAX_SDK_ROOT set to point to the 3ds Max SDK root.
V-Ray solutions have some options that are conditionally defined in few stages of the CMake configuration process. Because of this when using the CMake GUI one may have perform the configure step few times so all the options are set-up.
To get started with the samples for 3ds Max 2022:
- Open command prompt in the samples directory, e.g. C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\V-Ray\3ds Max 2022\samples
- Execute CMake, e.g. cmake -B"C:\build\VRay3dsMax2022Samples" -H"." -G"Visual Studio 15 2017" -A"x64" -T"v141" -D"3DSMAX_SDK_ROOT=D:\conan\pack\Max2022SDK"
If no errors occurred, the solutions should be in the output directory specified by "-B".